With the development of mobile communication technologies, electronic devices have changed into a form of being easily carried and being freely accessing wired and wireless networks. For example, portable electronic devices, such as smartphones and table personal computer (PCs), may support a variety of functions, such as an Internet connection, other than a telephony function and a message communication function.
Some of the above-mentioned portable electronic devices may be implemented to freely access various networks, for example, a cellular network to which a certain charging policy is applied, whereas the others may be implemented not to directly access the cellular network.
Therefore, the electronic device which may not access the cellular network directly may indirectly access the cellular network by establishing a communication connection (e.g., a device to device (D2D) connection) with the electronic device which may directly access the cellular network (e.g., tethering technologies).
If an external electronic device indirectly accesses the cellular network through tethering, data traffic of an electronic device which provides the tethering may be rapidly increased. In general, since a charging policy is established in the cellular network based on data traffic used by the electronic device, a user of the electronic device which provides the tethering should pay considerable communication charges.
Therefore, the electronic device which provides the tethering prevents an unintended increase in data traffic by requesting a device which receives the tethering to perform authentication.
With the development of tethering technologies, tethering based on a local-area communication network (e.g., a Wi-Fi network) as well as tethering based on the cellular network may be implemented. Therefore, in the electronic device which provides the tethering, there may be a need for presetting a scope for authentication, an authentication scheme, and an access range of a communication network according to the authentication, with respect to the electronic device which receives the tethering.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure.